‘Instant petrified wood’—so ran the
heading to the announcement in Popular Science, October 1992.1
It’s also the reality of research conducted at the Advanced Ceramic
Labs at the University of Washington in Seattle (USA).

Researchers have also made wood-ceramic composites that
are 20–120% harder than regular wood, but still look like wood.
Surprisingly simple, the process involves soaking wood in a solution containing
silicon and aluminium compounds. The solution fills the pores in the wood,
which is then oven-cured at 44°C (112°F). According to the lab’s
research director, Daniel Dobbs, such experiments have impregnated the
wood to depths of about 5 millimetres (0.2 inches). Furthermore, deeper
penetration under pressure and curing at higher temperature have yielded
a rock-hard wood-ceramic composite that has approached petrified wood.

Patent 'recipe' for petrification

However, priority for the discovery of a 'recipe' for petrification
of wood must go to Hamilton Hicks of Greenwich, Connecticut (USA), who
on September 16, 1986 was issued with US Patent Number 4,612,050.2
According to Hicks, his chemical 'cocktail' of sodium silicate (commonly
known as 'water glass'), natural spring or volcanic mineral water having
a high content of calcium, magnesium, manganese, and other metal salts,
and citric or malic acid is capable of rapidly petrifying wood. But in
case you want to try this 'recipe,' you need to know that for artificial
petrification to occur there is some special technique for mixing these
components in the correct proportions to get an 'incipient' gel condition.

Hicks wrote:

'When applied to wood, the solution penetrates the wood.
The mineral water and sodium silicate are relatively proportioned so
the solution is a liquid of stable viscosity and is acidified to the
incipient jelling [gelling] condition to a degree causing jelling [gelling]
after penetrating the wood, but not prior thereto. That is to say, the
solution can be stored and shipped, but after application to the wood,
jells [gels] in the wood. When its content is high enough, the penetrated
wood acquires the characteristics of petrified wood. The wood can no
longer be made to burn even when exposed to moisture or high humidity,
for a prolonged period of time. The apparent petrification is obtained
quickly by drying the wood.'3

The patent indicates that the amount of acid in the solution
appears to have a critical effect on the production of the gel phase within
the cell structure of the wood, although evaporation also plays its part.
Wood thoroughly impregnated, even if necessary by repeated applications
or submersions of the wood in the solution, after drying evidently has
all the characteristics of petrified wood, including its appearance.

Both Hicks and the researchers at the University of Washington
lab have suggested potential uses for such 'instant' petrified woods:

Fireproofing wooden structures such as houses and horse stables (the
horses wouldn't be tempted to chew on the wood either!).

Longer-wearing floors and furniture.

Greater strength wood for structural uses.

Insect, decay and salt water 'proofing' wood in buildings, etc.

Rapid natural petrification

The chemical components used to artificially petrify wood
can be found in natural settings around volcanoes and within sedimentary
strata. Is it possible then that natural petrification can occur rapidly
by these processes? Indeed! Sigleo4 reported silica deposition
rates into blocks of wood in alkaline springs at Yellowstone National
Park (USA) of between 0.1 and 4.0 mm/yr.

From Australia come some startling reports. Writing in The
Australian Lapidary Magazine, Pigott5 recounts his experiences
in southwestern Queensland:

'. . . from Mrs McMurray [of Blackall], I heard a story
that rocked me and seemed to explode many ideas about the age of petrified
wood. Mrs McMurray has a piece of wood turned to stone which has clear
axe marks on it. She says the tree this piece came from grew on a farm
her father had at Euthella, out of Roma, and was chopped down by him
about 70 years ago. It was partly buried until it was dug up again,
petrified. Mac McMurray capped this story by saying a townsman had a
piece of petrified fence post with the drilled holes for wire with a
piece of the wire attached.

'Petrified wood thousands of years old? I wonder is it
so?'

Several months later Pearce6 added further to
these amazing stories of woods rapidly petrified in the ground of 'outback'
Queensland:

'This sort of thing is, of course, quite common. The Hughenden
district, N. Q. [North Queensland], has . . . Parkensonia trees washed
over near a station [ranch] homestead and covered with silt by a flood
in 1918 [which] had the silt washed off by a flood in 1950. Portions
of the trunk had turned to stone of an attractive colour. However, much
of the trunks and all the limbs had totally disappeared.

'On Zara Station [Ranch], 30 miles [about 48 kilometres]
from Hughenden, I was renewing a fence. Where it was dipped into a hollow
the bottom of the old posts had gone through black soil into shale.
The Gidgee wood was still perfect in the black soil. It then cut off
as straight as if sawn, and the few inches of post in the shale was
pure stone. Every axe mark was perfect and the colour still the same
as the day the post was cut . . . .

'I understand that down in the sandhill country below
Boulia [south-western Queensland], where fences are often completely
covered by shifting sand, it's a common thing for the sand to shift
off after a number of years, leaving stone posts standing erect.'

From the other side of the world comes a report of the chapel
of Santa Maria of Health (Santa Maria de Salute), built in 1630 in Venice,
Italy, to celebrate the end of The Plague. Because Venice is built on
watersaturated clay and sand, the chapel was constructed on 180,000 wooden
pilings to reinforce the foundations. Even though the chapel is a massive
stone block structure, it has remained firm since its construction. How
have the wooden pilings lasted over 360 years? They have petrified! The
chapel now rests on 'stone' pilings!7

Experimental verification

Of course, none of these reports should come as a surprise,
since the processes of petrification of wood have been known for years,
plus the fact that the process can occur, and has occurred, rapidly. For
example Scurfield and Segnit8 had reported that the petrification
of wood can be considered to take place in five stages:

1. Entry of silica in solution or as a colloid into the
wood.
2. Penetration of silica into the cell walls of the wood's structure.
3. Progressive dissolving of the cell walls which are at the same time
replaced by silica so that the wood's dimensional stability is maintained.
4. Silica deposition within the voids within the cellular wall framework
structure.
5. Final hardening (lithification) by Drying out.

Furthermore Oehler9 had previously shown that
the silica minerals quartz and chalcedony critically important in the
petrification of wood, can be made, rapidly in the laboratory from silica
gel. At 300°C (572°F) and 3 kilobars (about 3,000 atmospheres)
pressure only 25 hours was required to crystallize quartz, whereas at
only 165°C (329°F) and 3 kilobars pressure the same degree of
crystallization occurred in 170 hours (about seven days).

Similarly, Drum10 had partially silicified small
branches by placing them in concentrated solutions of sodium metasilicate
for up to 24 hours, while Leo and Barghoorn11 had immersed
fresh wood alternately in water and saturated ethyl silicate solutions
until the open spaces in the wood were filled with mineral material, all
within several months to a year. Likewise, as early as 1950 Merrill and
Spencer12 had shown that the sorption of silica by wood fibres
from solutions of sodium metasilicate, sodium silicate and activated silica
sols (a homogeneous suspension in water) at only 25°C (77°F) was
as much as 12.5 moles of silica per gram within 24 hours--the equivalent
of partial silicification/petrification. As Sigleo concluded,

Conclusions

The evidence, both from scientists' laboratories and God's
natural laboratory, shows that under the right chemical conditions wood
can be rapidly petrified by silicification, even at normal temperatures
and pressures. The process of petrification of wood is now so well known
and understood that scientists can rapidly make petrified wood in their
laboratories at will.

Unfortunately, most people still think, and are led to believe,
that fossilized wood buried in rock strata must have taken thousands,
if not millions, of years to petrify. Clearly, such thinking is erroneous,
since it has been repeatedly demonstrated that petrification of wood can,
and does, occur rapidly. Thus the timeframe for the formation of the petrified
wood within the geological record is totally compatible with the biblical
time-scale of a recent creation and a subsequent devastating global Flood.